Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Those studies are so often flawed will pieces. Houses begging sold or between tenants are counted as vacant. Vacancies in rural Pennsylvania and Kentucky don't matter much for the homeless in Oakland.

What do you even do with that information? Ship the homeless around the country?

Other studies should that the higher the vacancy rate the lower the homeless rate and the cheaper housing is. So we can just allow people to build where people want to live and solve both problems.




Between tenants should be considered vacant, when you consider that landlords have been colluding to restrict supply and drive up rents


There should be reasonable lag time of a month or so. That way the landlord has time to perform maintenance between tenants.


If you do the right "step-up" programs and purchasable housing becomes extremely cheap around the country, it will solve itself. There are a lot of homeless people in Oakland that if found out they can buy a house in Kentucky and afford it with a restaurant dish-cleaning job, they would move. Stop treating the homeless as "shippable containers" they have agency.


Such houses do not exist. A minimum wage dish washing job barely pays enough to eat off of.

Your gross take home from a minimum wage part time job is $145/week. Before all taxes and deductions.

You can’t afford a closet is crack hiuse on that “salary” even in the boonies.

Even in my LCOL areas places that were like $400/month 5 or 6 years ago are over $1000/month.


I think you missed the thread - we're making it nearly impossible for someone to own a rental, it would flood the market with purchasable homes - cratering home prices potentially making the medium drop from $400k to $100k (at least for a certain class of homes), create programs for homeless people to get loans - some kind of step-up, combined with a job, and the homeless would suddenly be home owners and become people contributing to the world again.


I don't think I missed the thread. Crating home prices is basically recreating half of the 20008 financial crisis when people are underwater and unable to move, nor have any financial flexibility. Giving homeless people a program to help them out of homelessness and into some form of housing can be good, but jumping them up to homeowners seems a giant leap. If you get them into a stable job and apartment, they aren't homeless anymore. If they're stable, they'll eventually qualify for a loan like everyone else.


$100k might as well be $100m to 99% of homeless people. Do you think they’re going to qualify for a loan at a non-usurious rate?

In case, if the market value drops, well, rich people will just buy them.

If you’re currently in a “$300k” home and can buy a “$400k” home for $100k… like how do any of these numbers make any sort of sense?


What is a rich person that already has a home going to do with a $100k house that costs another $100k for them each year?


What's the homeless person that can't afford it going to do with it?


I believe that you overestimate the ability / desire for someone to move even if there are more opportunities there.

A person's friends, family, social support... and frankly, modern culture can make moving a sticky problem.

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/de...

The rate of people moving between states has dropped significantly.

https://www2.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/d...

The people moving within the same city has stayed rather constant, it is the distance moves that have dropped - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...

---

I believe that if you offered homeless people in Oakland a job and a house in Kentucky that they could pay off in 10 years while working as a dish washer, you would have very few takers.

I would also suggest that the town that has the dishwashing job in Kentucky - that business is likely to close in 5 years and there won't be any more unskilled jobs in the town and they'll be out of a job and unable to pay the mortgage, get foreclosed and be homeless again -- they know that story.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't - homeless in California is known while a homeless in Kentucky is something else with even fewer opportunities out.


Plus that town in Kentucky is likely already dealing with a homelessness epidemic of their own before you start bussing people in from out of state.

Also ignoring that many people who live in California would face non-trivial threats to their health and livelihood if they were move to a regressive Bible Belt state. That is not a theoretical concern, but one born out by numerous tragedies.


"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't - homeless in California is known while a homeless in Kentucky is something else with even fewer opportunities out."

Sounds like when homeless people or people on various assistance sometimes turn down opportunities because they're afraid (sometimes rightfully do) that it will ruin one of their other assistance. How do you help people who don't want to be helped?


The dish washer jobs pays less than minimum wage under the table, beacuse the government flew desperate people from the poorest part of the planet to town to compete with the existing dishwashers.


> beacuse the government flew desperate people from the poorest part of the planet to town to compete with the existing dishwashers.

Gonna need some sources on this one.


From just last week:

> The Center for Immigration Studies found last year from January 2023 to December 2023, at least 320,000 illegal immigrants were allowed to fly into the U.S. from their home country through a controversial program of the Biden administration using the Customs and Border Patrol app, the CBP One app that was created to let migrants apply for parole into the US.

> The Parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization.

https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/biden-admin-flew-hu...


Sigh.

The humanitarian parole program was created to allow 30,000 Cuban/Haitian/Nicaraguan/Venezuelan nationals in per month on a two year work visa as long as they have a US sponsor that will financially support them and pass background checks.

In return, Mexico is allowing the US to expel 30,000 illegal migrants per month from those countries to Mexico rather than their home countries.


It doesn't matter if they're only here for two years; they still need housing during that time.

That's 30,000 unhoused individuals per month being added, and unless the expelled offsets it, they still need housing.


It reduced illegal border crossings by people from those countries by more than were admitted through the program, so housing requirements should be reduced overall.


When is the humanitarian relief for dishwashers in Kentucky expected to arrive?


Not relief. Parole.

The parole process has reduced the number of aliens from those countries entering the US and government spending and lets us do background checks, capture biometrics and cap how long they're allowed to be here.

There's a reason why the court tossed Texas' lawsuits against it this week. They couldn't find injury.


If they're coming in under a government program with proper paperwork, they aren't illegals.


I agree. It's government policy at this point to bring in as many people as possible for some reason. My guess is to drive down wages, some others have guessed that it's due to a belief that global conflict is rising and the native population is unwilling to fight.


Then you should not have said 320,000 illegal immigrants brought in, since you agree they are not illegals.


This perspective seems to be missing the forest for the trees. Bribery isn't illegal for Congress, it's just called lobbying. Insider trading isn't illegal either.

Loose immigration policy and the lack of border enforcement obviously exerts downward pressure on wages for low skill workers. It also bids up rents since illegal immigrants are willing to pile into a 1 bedroom apartment. The elite own businesses and real estate, both of which benefit from illegal immigration reducing wages and increasing demand for rent. If you take a minute to think about the incentives, then see the effects in the world around you, it's pretty obvious what's going on.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: